1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a method for processing data and to a data collector for processing data. More particularly, the data may be data of a parameter counter for an image forming process.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data collection methods are used in information processing practice. The data may relate to the processes of an image forming apparatus, for example. Data relating to an image forming apparatus are collected by a data collector. The data are stored in a data collector database in the data collector.
In such a system a large amount of process-specific, device-specific and/or user-specific data may need to be collected, stored and subsequently reported on. In the field of image forming, there may be a counter for each of hundreds of different parameters. Furthermore, a data collector may receive data for these counters from hundreds of different image forming apparatuses. A data collector database may store of the order of about 100 gigabytes of data, for example.
The data collector may receive data for these counters by polling the image forming apparatuses. The polling can be unreliable in that sometimes an image forming apparatus may not respond to provide the data.